What’s on TV tonight, June 22

What’s on TV tonight, June 22

1of2Flowers are placed in a bullet hole on a window of IV Deli Mart, after a mass shooting took place by a drive-by shooter near the UC Santa Barbara campus in 2014. Some of the victims were stabbed and others were shot.Photo: Jae C. Hong / Jae C. Hong / Associated Press 2014

2of2The documentary “Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014” tells the stories of just a few of the 8,000 people who died by gunfire in the spring of 2014.

You could make the observation that the HBO documentary special, “Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014” is sadly well-timed, airing as it does less than a week after a lone gunman took the lives of nine people during a prayer meeting at a South Carolina church.

But the truth is, there are enough gun deaths in the U.S. to make it almost impossible for the documentary not to be well-timed.

More than 32,000 Americans die each year from gun violence. The HBO documentary, airing at 9 p.m., highlights the stories of just a few of the 8,000 people who died by gunfire in the spring of 2014. The stories were randomly chosen, but the victims were not random: They were mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children.

The 28th season of the documentary series “POV” kicks off at 10 p.m. on KQED and Logo with a broadcast of the film “Out in the Night,” about a group of African American lesbians who were charged with attempted murder after being threatened.

Television pioneer Norman Lear is Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s guest on “Startalk” for the show’s season finale at 11 p.m. on the National Geographic Channel.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and TV critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. A native of Rochester, N.Y., he holds a bachelor's degree in English and a master's in journalism from American University in Washington, D.C.

He joined The Chronicle in 1992 as a copy editor with the arts section and became entertainment editor in 1995 and executive features editor in 2006. He took on the job of television critic in 2010, writing regular TV reviews and columns not only for The Chronicle but for other papers in the Hearst chain.

Before The Chronicle, he was managing editor of Dole Newspapers in Somerville, Mass., and editor of the Amesbury (Mass.) News.